There are quite a few aspects to this that I think are important. As I considered the comments posted here and other verbal comments that I have received, it has become clearer that I think the factors fall into at least two main groups: classroom constraints, and task aspects. In the area of classroom constraints are several issues that the teacher / facilitator needs to work around. In the area of task aspects, I’m jumping off from Ellen Gottesdiener’s book, Requirements by Collaboration as well as other sources. (I haven’t had Ellen’s class, so if I’m off base, please let me know!)
Under classroom and teaching constraints, we have several challenges:
- varied skill levels of the students / participants
- varied goals of the students / participants / (and, at times, sponsors, alas)
- varied learning style preferences (I’m appreciating this aspect more and more with Andy’s research)
- varied past experiences with trust, with the other students, people at large, and in this kind of situation
- and the need to justify the importance of collaboration skills and experiences to the students to gain their cooperation
In the area of the task aspects, Ellen mentions the need for these things for collaboration to take place:
- a shared purpose exists (see the problem with goals above)
- mutual trust
- agreed upon approaches to work
She also mentions the need to acknowledge the existence of different, equally valid viewpoints. While she is focusing on developing requirements, it would seem that these things would be equally true for any collaborative efforts.
Harrison McKnight , at Michigan State University, has done considerable research on the issue of trust, in general and as it relates to IT. I’ve been going back over some of his work as I think about collaboration between testers and the rest of the development team. I’m going to work through the topics I listed above in the next series of posts and will get in to his work on trust as I do.
In thinking about this, I also dug up an article from 1999 by Timothy Lethbridge on “Priorities for the education and training of software engineers”. I was curious to see if there was anything resembling this topic in his list of 75 topics that they surveyed junior and senior practictioners about. The closest I could see were negotiation, psychology, and management. They asked, among other things, how much people had learned in their formal education about each topic. Negotiation was # 75 out of 75. All of the “soft skills” were in the bottom third. What did they forget the most from their education? Differential equations, differential and integral calculus, and linear algebra and matrices.Hmmmm.
